


Cyclical

by Whumpaholic (ShadeShadow234)



Category: Gintama
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dark, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, It’s not as dark as these tags make it look, Mild Gore, Temporary Character Death, he lives if that helps, late game spoilers babes lookout, or I guess it is...?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2020-09-05 20:33:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20279392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadeShadow234/pseuds/Whumpaholic
Summary: Gintoki is seven when he first dies.It’s not the only time.





	1. Gintoki

**Author's Note:**

> idk man *shrug emoji*

He dies on the battle field when he’s seven years old. The soldiers are cruel but the amanto are crueller and do not care for the little silver haired boy, bloodied and scared. 

They laugh, as his blood stains the fields, and their laughter is the last he hears. 

He wakes to the moon in the sky, scars all that are left of his ordeal. Moving hurts. 

He moves anyway. 

He dies in a fire when he’s twelve. “Promise me,” Says Shouyou. He nods, lump in his throat, tears stinging in the smoke. 

The guards hold him back until Shouyou is long out of sight, but the fires are still hot at his back. 

He doesn’t see the grim look they exchange. 

The butt of a staff pushes him into the flames, and he  burns .

He wakes up as a pair of hands shake him, insistent. 

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Zura says. There’s tear tracks on his face. Takasugi looks just as scared. 

He dies in the war no less than ten times. This is some sort of divine comedy. 

He starves to death three times, in prison. “It’s unnatural,” whispers one guard.

“He’s a demon,” replies the other. 

The first time he doesn’t die, an old lady presses steaming buns into his hands. Snow in on the ground, in thick cold blankets, and he thinks that’s unfair. Blankets can’t be cold. Or if they are, they’re only supposed to be cold under you get in them. The snow just keeps on being cold anyway. He’s prepared, he thinks. Tucked up behind a grave, snow already thick on his head and shoulders. He hasn’t moved for hours. Starving is always a slow death. 

But this time, it does not come. 

The next time he dies, it’s with the benizakura buried in his side. Shinpachi, he’s so proud, has he ever told him that? He knew Shinpachi could do it. 

He bleeds out on Shinpachi’s shoulder, and his heart begins to beat again at the dojo. He doesn’t know if Shinpachi is aware he carried a corpse all that way. Maybe, if he was, he would have left him behind. 

He doesn’t die crushed by the benizakuras metal veins. There’s a stubborn trio of idiots that he’s gotta protect stopping that.

Still, Shinpachi looks at him with scared eyes and shaky hands, sometimes, and Gintoki wonders if Shinpachi felt his body begin to grow cold. 

He and Katsura are dosed with some sort of gas, something that promotes aging. Katsura turns old and grey, wrinkles turning his face into a lined portrait. 

Gintoki does not change at all. 

He laughs it off, “I held my breath! You should have tried that, Zura,” and everyone moves on.

Nobody sees Gintoki’s hands shaking. 

Weeks later, he bring a helicopter down upon himself, and walks out of the flaming rubble. His limbs should have stopped working already, with such deep furrows carved into them, but he hardly feels the pain. Bansai will be back, later, probably, but right now Gintoki has a train to catch. 

He lives free of worry, for a while, and then Hosen crushes his skull like a ripe grape. 

He wakes up in time to catch Tsukoyu’s kunai, and exhale a breath of relief. Hosen buried him deep enough in the wall that his death went unseen. 

He dies two more times in that fight. 

No one notices. 

Afterwards, he hugs Shinpachi and Kagura tightly, and they hug him back. 

The next time he dies, it is again with Tsukoyu. His back is slashed open, blood gleaming in the pale moonlight, and he toppled forwards into the sea. The blow seperates his spine. The seawater finds his lungs through his back. 

Hemorrhoid-Ninja fishes him out a while later. He coughs up lungfuls of water, too much, entirely, but his spine is too busy re-alining for his body to focus on anything else. 

He dies bleeding out in a graveyard, inches away from Otose. He does not see how his touch forces her lungs to move, again, from where they had fallen still.

He is dead longer this time, than he has ever been before. 

He wakes up in a morgue. 

He finds Shinpachi and Kagura outside Otose’s Snack Bar. They look at him through red-rimmed eyes as though he is a ghost. 

‘_You died_,’ they don’t say, and he doesn’t offer an explanation. 

He dies back to back with Jirocho. It’s his shortest time spent dead, a wobble in his step. 

Barely enough to even be considered dead. 

He manages to avoid death for... months. Its the longest he’s spent alive since Shouyou-Sensei. 

When he next dies it is at his own hands, in more ways than one. 

He drives his bokuto deep into his gut, holds on until the wood shatters, holds on until an explosion detonates point blank on his torso. 

He is the first to wake up, out of Shinpachi, Kagura, and Otae. It gives him time to drag his torso over to his legs. 

He remembers, he notes blankly. Kintoki was full of shit. 

Except, he wasn’t, not really. Not when Shinpachi and Kagura and Otae wake up and look at him with blank eyes. 

It feels worse than dying. He would know. 

“Mami?” Asks Kagura, at the same time Otae and Shinpachi ask “Hajime-nii?”

It takes two weeks for their memories to come back, and when they do, Gintoki is treated to three hug-tackles. 

And then Hajime-nii _shows up_. Gintoki knows what it’s like to be a dead man walking, but at least he has control over his actions. 

Gintoki is used to his wounds disappearing within a few minutes, until, one time, Hajime catches him on the arm with his Beam Saber. “Whoops, sorry!” Hajime exclaims, grinning, and patting a cool, metallic hand over the wound. 

“Watch where you swing that thing!” Gintoki yells, and the wound remains as long as it would on a— on a normal person. 

It’s enough to make him hold still when Hajime plants his Beam Saber through his gut and prepares to blast his face off. 

Thankfully, Shinpachi comes swinging back in, and he brings Gintoki’s senses back with him. 

Recovery time sucks, as it turns out. 

And then he swaps bodies with that mayo-freak.

He doesn’t know the details, exactly, of what happened, but his body bears new scars when he gets it back, and Hijikata keeps giving him haunted looks. 

And then the Shogun is assassinated. 

And Gintoki meets a man who can’t die, just like him. 

Or, really, Gintoki had known a man who couldn’t die his entire life. 

Utsuro takes his head off. Kagura screams, rage and despair, flings herself at him and crushes his bones, hitting him and hitting him until he is nothing but a bloody pulp and Utsuro keeps on getting back up. 

She buys him enough time to get his head back on. 

He explains to his kids, later, the truth of his life. They look on, at first, in horror, and then sadness, and then... 

Gintoki doesn’t know how to explain the warmth he feels, when they launch themselves at him, hugging him tight. 

They avoid looking at the scar that rips through his neck. He takes to wearing a scarf. 

And finally; the final confrontation with Utsuro. 

Gintoki flings himself after Sadaharu, a hand brushing his thick white fur, but the sickly green of the altana suddenly is overwhelming. 

Utsuro’s one weakness, isn’t it? 

Looks like it’s his, too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finished this bad boy up the week after my dad died. Anyway sadaharu kicks him out of the light and everyone yells at him for being an idiot


	2. Kagura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kagura is 14 when she first sees Gintoki die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eyy guess who’s adding more chapters

Kagura is 14 when she first sees Gintoki die.

  
There’s been— before, when Shinpachi has stepped away from the cemetery looking shaken and pale, when Otae had gently guided her away, and when only one ambulance showed up. But she hadn’t seen that. 

She huddles against Shinpachi, afterwards, on one of the uncomfortable-but-familiar couches of the Yorozuya building.

“I didn’t check,” he says, eventually, to the silence, the open air. “We must have just missed it. He’s too strong to— he wouldn’t—“ Shinpachi starts, but never finishes. Kagura is fine to let the sentiment hang.

But Kagura is fourteen, and there’s blood smeared on her face and drenching her clothes, one of her legs has been broken and she’s barely standing— she’s fourteen and Gintoki is going toe-to-toe with a monster, matching it blow for blow until he just.

Stops.

Kagura sees the silver glint of steel, eyes tracing its fatal arc towards Gin-Chans neck, and before the sight can reach she’s moving, one foot in front of the other in a desperate lunge— but her leg is broken. 

She stumbles, faults, and by the time she straightens the sword has fallen still, red dripping from the blade.

Gin-Chan is—

  
Gin-Chan—

The sound of her heartbeat fills her ears.

* * *

_He— It won’t die._

* * *

Kagura, once, promised she would never lose control again.

She would lose control a thousand times over if it meant she never had to see—

A warm, rough, calloused hand on her arm brings her back, her eyes are burning and she doesn’t know if it’s from not blinking or from the tears that are building. Gin-Chan is standing, again, steady and strong enough that she’d almost think that seeing him— that it had been a trick, a... lie, or some fancy word Shinpachi would use, but there’s a ragged scar across his neck.

It doesnt seem right, some part of her notes, the cut had been clean— he had died.

She throws herself at him, uncaring as her blood— or tears? leave hot streaks across her face. Her arms lock around his torso and she thinks he would have that look on his face— when he looks like he doesn’t expect kindness, expects silence or an uncaring attitude or a harsh blow, where a smile gradually spreads slow and sun warm over his face, and she hugs him tighter.

He hugs her back as a ship smashes into the rapidly regenerating smear of red that was Utsuro.

She finds herself staring at the scar, a lot, even as she and Shinpachi demand explanations.

He explains, truthfully, and some part of Kagura distantly remembers her Mami. Remembers, once, when Baldy had stepped out for a few weeks— again, and thugs had broken in and mami had gotten stabbed to protect them. How mami had been fine minutes later.

And then Shinpachi asks; “how many times have you died?” Gintoki goes quiet, at that, and eventually breaks the silence with a forced laugh.

“Are you calling me old?” It’s cheap and quickly thought of and Kagura runs with it anyway, her and Shinpachi stepping into routine easy as breathing. (Even if the hug they level at him is a step out of the norm.)

Gin-Chan takes to wearing a scarf. And then, on the planet Kagura grew up on, Kamui chokes him with it.

The battle between her older brother and Gin-Chan is hard to watch, harder to take part of, especially when he stops, chest still and eyes blank and some part of her— most of her— thinks ‘what if’. 

It’s an impossible fight, but the Yorozuya have faced worse odds and they pull out of it alive. At the end, though, Gintoki picks his unsteady way over new rubble to retrieve the scarf, turned a dark purple from its original sky blue.

He wraps it loosely around his neck and Kagura—

Kagura—

Kagura remembers seeing her brother take a fistful of it, that blue cloth, remembers the manic grin, remembers the sharp crack. How quickly his lungs had just... stopped.

She’s pulled back to herself on Sakamoto’s ship as it cruises for earth, her head resting on Gin-Chans shoulder.

Utsuro gouges an eye out. Shes seen— she remembers, the snapped neck, the broken fingers, and how Kamui had—.

She’s seen how quickly he heals.

He doesn’t heal.

The green light is filling the air with poison, and she can’t decide who she’s more scared for— Gintoki, or Sadaharu.

They’ll be okay. They’re always okay, (Except she leaves and Gin-Chan leaves and Shinpachi is left to run odd jobs all on how own, and she can’t find a cure for Sadaharu and Gin-Chans eye was still...)

((She comes back, eventually. And eventually, Gin-Chan does too. His eye is still missing.))

(((Quietly, while searching for a cure for Sadaharu, she also searched for anything— anything on immortality. Like Mami. Like Utsuro. Like Gin-Chan. Each planet has something, she finds. An altar. A weapon. Never a person.)))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said in the end notes last time, chapter one was written in the week after my dad died— and I published it when it was done. I’ve got a little bit more space between me and that event, now, but.. the grief still wells up, yknow? I’m sorta dumping it in here, so forgive any Ooc shit. Next chapters got shin-boys perspective .


	3. Shinpachi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You weren’t planning to move, were you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I caved and posted Shinpachi’s chapter today.  
This one jumps around a little bit more in the timeline tbh. Watch out for that. Also fair warning to y’all I have read the ending in the manga so like. Some of the later chapters might get a little spoilery for that if you’re an anime fan only idk
> 
> Ps ao3 changed smth and now I can’t find the line breaks so *** is a line break now

Shinpachi knows what it looks like when someone wants to fight. He’s been watching fights since he was three, maybe even younger, and he knows it like he knows himself. The wariness, the shifting, hands fidgeting as if for a weapon. He’s seen it all. 

Even when brutality injured Gintoki simply doesn’t stop. 

Except he has. 

His grip is sweaty on the pommel of his blade and he’s frozen, frozen and keenly aware of Kagura and Aneu-ue stopping behind him, can barely hear their stilted gasps over the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears. 

Because Gintoki doesn’t look like he wants to fight. 

Shinpachi remembers being little, and being pushed to fight Hajime-nii by his father. And he remembers how Hajime always, always knew when he didn’t want to fight, and how he always, always would stop, the moment Shinpachi’s father was out of view. 

Hajime does not stop. 

The red light from his hand only grows brighter, and Gintoki is— is trapped, pinned to the wall, and Shinpachi has taken off Hajime’s arm before he even realizes he’s moved. 

Hajime shatters his sword in his flesh and bone hand, and Shinpachi has to force back bile. The sword drives towards him, and he watches the tip of it as it gleams red in the low lighting. 

Shinpachi thinks he’s going to die. 

And then Gintoki rips the beam Sabre out of his gut in a lunge— a desperate lunge, Shinpachi notes, distantly— had he looked like that? 

It’s a wound that should be fatal, this hole burned through him and then ripped out. 

Somehow, it’s not. 

Gintoki takes a few months to heal. The scar lies close to the wide, flat one from benizakura. 

Shinpachi stares at both of them, while Gintoki swaps his bandages, and something in the back of his mind tries to click. 

He doesn’t want it to. 

It’s a horrible, awful thing to realize, and Shinpachi tries to shove it away— but. 

He doesn’t say anything. Words would make it real. 

_ “You weren’t going to move.”_

***

Shinpachi remembers the first time he saw Gin-San lose a fight. The smell of blood and oil, Elizabeths weirdly strong arms, the pommel of the blade sweaty in his grip. 

Less so, he remembers the run to his house. 

Gin-San— for a man who could eat three parfaits in a sitting— felt weirdly light, still and silent slumped against Shinpachi’s shoulder. 

It had been hard to tell if he was breathing. 

It had been harder still to listen to him groan in pain every time Shinpachi would stumble— would falter. 

He doesn’t remember the period during which Gin-San had stopped making any noise at all. 

What he does remember is facing off against the Kiheitai, fighting side by side with Kagura. 

He remembers how the roof had caved in, how that writhing mass of technology and flesh had screamed— how the figure wrapped up by its right arm wasn’t moving at all. 

He stabs Benizakura before he can think better of it, and much like him Kagura already has her arms wrapped around its neck. 

There’s a quiet, horrifying crunch from Benizakura’s arm, and for a moment, it is all that Shinpachi can hear. 

But Benizakura lets Gintoki go, and even as he slumps to floor bonelessly Shinpachi doesn’t have time to pause for breath. 

He breathes, later, when all of them are safely back home— when Gintoki’s bandages aren’t cherry red, anymore. 

He breathes, and he reflects, and he rationalizes. The crunch— it was— it had been the sheath of the sword— or maybe it was— two of Benizakura’s wires getting all mixed up. It wasn’t the same crunch his arm had made when he fell out of a tree and broke it. 

It _wasn’t_.    
  


***

It’s a rainy day. Miserable, almost, but they’re full swing into their comedy routine and it’s hard to feel sad when that’s going on. Unless you’re the butt of the joke. 

Or— him and Kagura are full swing in the comedy routine. Gintoki had wandered his own way a little while ago, probably to play pachinko. 

The thought of all their hard earned cash flushing down the drain like that is almost enough to set Shinpachi off— almost, except that’s Gin-San sprinting down the street towards them now, isn’t it? 

He dumps someone off in their arms— Shinpachi only sees his face for a moment but he looks scared— terrified. And then he’s off, again, tearing down the street. 

With Kagura’s help, they arrange the man Gin-San dumped on them in a nearby alley— he’ll be fine, probably— and then they take off after him. 

In the end, it’s a graveyard. Shinpachi takes a single step towards its entrance and it’s like he’s been punched in the gut— a horrible, horrible feeling. 

“Kagura-Chan, wait here, okay?” 

It’s a testament to how scared they are that she doesn’t argue. 

The first thing Shinpachi notes, in the graveyard, is the destruction. He follows its line— the shattered wooden remains of a sword, a row of gravestones smashed, a section of fence that looks like a bulldozer has struck it. 

From that section of fence, there’s a long smear of blood, diluted in the rain, and Shinpachi has to steady himself, for a moment. 

He follows the trail of blood— no. 

no no no no no no no. 

_No_. 

He isn’t moving. 

Shinpachi can’t bring himself to check— him or— or Otose. 

He steps back outside, grabs one of Kagura’s hands, and uses it as an anchor until the ambulance arrives. 

Only one. 

A sleek, black van shows up too. 

He feels Kagura tense, knows that if she pulls he will be helpless but to follow, but she doesn’t. 

Of course, it’s a misunderstanding. Gin-San wouldn’t die that easily. 

He would never leave them like that. 

***

Kin-San is very kind, Shinpachi notes, distantly. Always doing the right thing. Always getting hurt when he shouldn’t.

Like... right now. 

There’s some loud, rude, aggressive silver haired man who bursts into their house— demands their help— and then he hurts Kin-San. It sets an icy ball of hatred in Shinpachi’s stomach. 

‘_This isn’t right._’ Some part of Shinpachi whispers, like it’s afraid to be heard._ ‘He always got up quicker than this. Always.’_

Shinpachi ignores it. 

But then— the no-good man with curly silver hair flings himself off a roof to catch Sarutobi, even if it means falling to his own death and Shinpachi—

Shinpachi moves. 

He knows that Kagura and Sadaharu are moving, too, it’s such a G— Kintoki thing to do, how could they not be prepared to catch him? 

It jars his shoulders and he bites his tongue hard enough that it almost bleeds, but he catches him. 

He doesn’t want to know what would have happened if he hadn’t— and isn’t that an odd thought?

He’s sure than Kin-San would have forgiven him, though. 

The silver haired man, when he sets Sarutobi down, when he brushes himself off, when he waves them goodbye— he’s cryptic. Cryptic enough to make Shinpachi’s head hurt. 

And then he murders Tama. 

(_It’s not right it’s not right it’s not right it’s not right it’s not_)

It is without question that he and Kagura follow Kin-San into that alleyway, beside the Yorozuya building. 

He’s never hurt them before, there’s no reason to fear, right? He would never lie to them. 

Except he has. Oh, he has. 

_Gintoki_. 

Shinpachi’s legs are burning and his lungs are burning and his breath is starting to wheeze with every gasp— but he’s keeping pace with Kagura, who runs on and on like a terminator. In their sprint they pass so many citizens of Kabuchiko, all of them hazy eyed and gripping things that could vaguely be described as weapons— mops, broken glass bottles, a wooden sword. 

They messed up bad. 

Katsura finds them first, holding off two people brandishing tree branches. He takes one look at them, and points them away, throwing the tree branch wielders back. 

They don’t hesitate. 

(_God, don’t let them be late— please. Please._) 

They find the robotic remains of Kintoki, collapsed in front of a crater on the wall and a long smear of blood, gears and screws and wires surrounding it like gore. 

For a moment, Shinpachi pictures an all-too human body in its place, and he feels sick. 

The nearest rooftop lights up gold. 

_ No. _

He wakes up on a... rooftop? He doesn’t know why he’s up here, it doesn’t seem safe. Especially not to sleep. What if he had rolled over and fallen off? 

(_Something would have stopped that. What?)_

There’s a silver haired man watching him with fond eyes. His clothes are covered in blood, which also streaks down his face, dripping off of his chin. 

That’s a lot of blood. 

There’s two other people on the roof— one with brown hair and the other with orange. The orange haired one is already up, watching the silver haired man like a hawk. 

“You should— that’s a lot of blood, sir. You should go to the hospital.” 

He can’t explain why the man looks like he’s been shot. 

(Two weeks later, he can, and the horror he feels is insurmountable. Gintoki welcomes him back with open arms anyway.)

Utsuro is terrifying. Really, what else is there to say? Shinpachi watches Kagura reduce the thing to a bloody smear— vindictively— good, deserves it (_he doesn’t look down doesn’t look at Gin-San doesn’t look doesn’t look_) and he watches as it just stands back up again. 

But so does Gintoki. 

And if Utsuro is a monster.... what does that make him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man Shinpachi’s having a great time huh. Totally not traumatized. At all. In the least. :). Of course, he still loves Gin-San with his whole ass heart im not strong enough to change that. Writing the Kintama section was borderline painful bahaha  
Shinpachi: who is this rude loud man. I do not like him. :(  
Me, dramatic, on my knees and clutching my pen, wailing: bUT THATS GINTOKIIIII


	4. Kamui

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kamui loves fighting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time. Thinking I might have to up the rating on this fic.

Kamui loves fighting. Oh, the thrill of it— the pounding of his blood, of his opponents, the crunch and creak of bending and breaking bones— the adrenaline, the exhilaration.

Kamui hates fighting. He fights the bullies who hurt Kagura, he fights the harusame pirates, he fights his father. He fights his own blood in a battle for his mind.

In the end, he compromises.

Kamui loves fighting. He fights his way up the ranks of the Harusame, he fights his father, and he fights Housen in his little shelter of Yoshiwara.

On the way there, though, he fights a man with silver hair. It’s unremarkable, short, and Kamui brushes it from his bloodlust addled brain.

But then the samurai shows up again.

Kamui, admittedly, doesn’t think much of it.

The samurai dies, Kamui notes, human skull no match for the raw strength of Housen. As expected.

But then the samurai gets back up.

Interesting.

* * *

Kamui has a wonderful fight against another samurai, on the bloody deck of a crashing ship, surrounded by corpses. They’re driven apart by an explosion and the arrival of Abuto, and the frustration at the lack of getting a kill is enough for Kamui to break Kagura’s ribs. 

Two consecutive bloody, bloody fights is enough to quell his bloodlust enough that when he sees the silver samurai— bathed in blood— Kamui doesn’t lunge for the throat.

But it’s a near thing.

Next time, he thinks, silver samurai won’t be so lucky.

And he isn’t.

The silver samurai has a scarf, now, and Kamui grins at the opportunity that presents. The flimsy blue cloth rips when he pulls it tight, yanking backwards against the samurai’s forward momentum. There’s a wonderful crack, and Kamui lets the man drop, fending off Kagura as he waits for him to stand up again.

The samurai does not disappoint.

Kamui breaks his fingers, shatters his ribs, mashes his skull into the earth, and the samurai gets up and gets up and gets up. 

It’s intoxicating.

Enough that Kamui doesn’t notice his injuries, doesn’t notice how the samurai is taking longer and longer to get up each time, doesn’t notice how he’s slipping into the insanity of pure bloodlust. 

He wakes up with his head cradled on Kagura’s lap.

The next time Kamui sees Gintoki, they’re fighting for the fate of the earth.

This time, Kamui doesn’t attack him.

What fun is there in fighting a beaten opponent, after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this and then remembered that the whole liberation army arc was a thing that happened but I don’t think Kamui was there? Idk man my gintama memories are a lil fuzzy lmao


End file.
